The role of universities is changing: they used to be purely educators, today they move towards being innovators and regional developers. That is why their physical and social locations as hubs of development are increasingly important in urban planning.

Six higher education institutes spread around the Central Baltic area are working together to share experiences upon utilizing design-based participatory planning methods to develop their campuses. Project partners consist of City of Helsinki, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Riga Planning Region, Stockholm University, University of Latvia, University of Tartu, University of Turku and Uppsala University. Associated partners are City of Turku and Helsinki-Uusimaa Regional Council.

In practice, gathering and cumulating experience happens both in local campus development workshops with stakeholders in each partner city and in four interregional Livable City Forums, where findings are shared and discussed.

As the main result, project creates five integrated campus development plans that take into account the inputs from relevant stakeholders, link to on-going city plans and development processes. The results will address the spatial connection between the campus and its surroundings. The collaboration between higher education and the cities is very important to pave the way, so that identified best practices can be adapted to other city planning processes in the future.

The lead partner of Live Baltic Campus is Metropolia UAS. The project is funded by the Central Baltic Programme and the Regional Council of Southwest Finland and is running from 1st of October 2015 to 31st of March 2018.

Myllypuro Campus as Helsinki Pilot

Helsinki pilot concentrates on creating services and vitalizing the suburban Myllypuro neighborhood in Eastern Helsinki, the home of the future campus of Metropolia. This campus will also host the Health & Wellbeing Competence Hub of Metropolia. The pilot is about connecting local community, higher education institutes, business sector, city government, and other stakeholders to create a learning platform refining the themes of health, wellbeing, construction and real estate.

Helsinki pilot case is a collaboration between Metropolia UAS and the City of Helsinki.

Metropolia''s brand-new campus in Myllypuro will be built partly on top of the metro for 6000 students and 500 employees. It will be the largest of Metropolia's four campuses. The other campuses will situate in Arabianranta, Helsinki, Leppävaara, Espoo and Myyrmäki, Vantaa.

The following operations will move to Myllypuro Campus:

Social Sciences and Health Care

Construction and Real Estate

University Management

Centralized Shared Services.

The new campus will be completed in two phases in July 2018 and August 2019.

Check out:

Myllypuro campus

\r\nMore info about Myllypuro CampusYou can e.g. follow the construction on webcam\r\nOverview and information about Myllypuro

Livable City Forums

Livable City Forums organized by the project were about hearing true-life examples of strategies, methods and partnerships utilizing design thinking for better and more sustainable urban development. Check out what participants thought about the Forums!